the nights are long and i am cold
by aFigureOfSpeech
Summary: The silence condemned him, almost as much as her knock on his door. Mitchell pines in the dark. Mitchell/Annie


**Title**: the nights are long and i am cold  
><strong>Word<strong> **Count**: ~1,800  
><strong>Characters<strong>/**Pairings**: Mitchell/Annie  
><strong>Rating<strong>: M (for dark/sexual themes and a few swear words)  
><strong>Summary<strong>: The silence condemned him, almost as much as her knock on his door.  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: Being Human does not belong to me.

**Note**: Started ages ago, based partially on That One Scene in episode 2x07, and partially on an old thread in the vamp_n_ghost lj comm, and if I don't stop looking at it I will go crazy. So, here it is. Takes place before the ep.

I'd also like to thank the lovely borg_princess for being my beta. She's a peach. :)

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><p>"I think I might've inhaled you<br>I can feel you behind my eyes  
>You've gotten into my bloodstream<br>I can feel you floating in me."

-_Bloodstream_, by Stateless

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><p>Mitchell was no stranger to nightmares. His housemates had long ago gotten used to him crying out in the middle of the night. They had also learned very quickly that, come sundown, his room was off-limits. It was for the best, really.<p>

_(There were monsters under—in—his bed, after all.)_

Still, every time he awoke in bed, gasping and sweating, there would be a knock on his _(closed, always closed)_ door and a soft "all right?" from the other side. He would always make some kind of answer, a "yeah" or a "fine" or a grunt—anything at all, whatever he could manage—and then Annie would move on, to do whatever it was she did while the rest of the world slept.

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><p><em>(Here's a secret: it wasn't always nightmares that made him cry out in the dark.)<em>

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><p>Nights could be so lonely. Vampires were oddly social creatures by nature, drawn together by blood and lust and a longing to belong somewhere in a world that now rejected them. Denying himself all of that took its toll eventually. And with no other way for release, well—Mitchell may have been dead, but he wasn't <em>dead<em>.

_(Not yet.)_

And Annie—sweet, lovely, _(almost-but-not-quite)_ innocent Annie—couldn't tell the difference.

Stupidly, one night Mitchell forgot about her entirely, drifting as she did about the house. Like every other night, she knocked on his door, her worried voice carrying easily through the thin wood. Caught by surprise, he'd nearly jumped right out of his skin. He had barely managed a hoarse, "m'fine," and it was several long minutes afterward before he felt the blood in his veins unfreeze.

As still as the corpse he should have been, suddenly he was intensely aware of her movements throughout the house: the slight rustles and creaks and clangs that marked her not-quite-there presence, the groan of the pipes and the high-pitched whine of electrical appliances as she passed from room to room.

He thought of her wandering restlessly about, looking for something to do with her hands. She was always doing that—things with her hands: making tea, straightening the shelves, washing dishes. Sometimes absentminded things, sometimes not—patting George's hand, picking at her shirt, touching his arm. Like if she stopped moving, stopped touching things, stopped making herself useful somehow, she would just drift away, lost in the stream of life without anything to anchor her in place.

_(He wondered when she'd picked that up—before or after she died?)_

Maybe right now she was putting on the kettle for her first batch of the day. Maybe she was sitting on the sofa with an old, dog-eared book. Maybe she had pulled out the fridge again for another go at the grime. Maybe she was keeping an ear open in case he cried out again.

His hand clenched unexpectedly, as unexpectedly as the sudden tingling rush that flared through him. There she was, only separated by a few layers of wood and plaster, completely unaware of what he was doing. And here he was, so close to release, and egged on by the very possibility that he might get caught.

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><p>And so it started out something like a game, a challenge: how quiet could he be?<p>

_(He takes his pleasure where he can get it, twisted little wanker that he is.)_

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><p>As it turned out, Mitchell was very bad at being quiet. He was a man of passion, of action, and restraint was something he'd always just grasped with the tips of his fingers. It made him a good vampire, but that much harder to contain his own nature. It made him a good fighter, but that much harder to stop the violence once he'd begun. It made him a good lover, but that much harder to separate between the sex and the blood. And, as it were, to control his vocal cords.<p>

There was something intoxicating about the restraint, though, of holding himself in until the very last moment, when he finally couldn't take it anymore, when he would finally

let

go

and

well.

What a rush that was.

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><p>Every so often there were these little moments that happened, moments <em>in between<em>, where she was—somehow or another—close enough that he could almost taste her presence. Only, and here's the thing—she was always so bright sometimes it practically made his teeth ache. He could never quite understand her; couldn't understand how a person could pass through the Door, see what she (they both) saw, find out the horrid, twisted truth of their own death and what came after, and still feel life the way she did. It defied all logic; _she_ defied all logic, his grey little ghost girl, vibrant and dancing like light through a stained glass window.

And yet, there she was.

Most days, he was so thankful for that. Annie was her own little sun, a ball of pure energy, reminding George and him both that their world was not completely without its own light and warmth. They needed that; oh, did they ever need that. Some days, he was even a little jealous of how she just kept right on, darkness and all. And some days…

Sometimes, on the very deepest, darkest nights—the ones where he was so cold he'd sell his own soul _(ha, too late for that)_ just to feel something—he wanted to taint her pretty little light. To take that _(almost-but-not-quite)_ innocence and twist it to reflect the world around her as it really was, the world he saw and lived and breathed and fed on, dammit, every single day of his fucked up not-life.

So one night, his skin like ice, he thought of Annie. Listened for her, wandering through their little pink house. Imagined her, small and grey and soft and sweet and oh-so-cold. Maybe listening for him. Maybe wandering by his door. Maybe thinking, _what could Mitchell be doing in there? Maybe I should make sure he's okay._

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><p>She puts her hand on the door, pausing as though to knock before deciding against it. Slowly, ever so slowly, she turns the knob. The door creaks just slightly as she opens it, and she freezes, afraid to be caught. But no, no, it's okay. Shyly, she enters, a little hesitant, her almost-but-not-quite body humming with nervousness but maybe also anticipation. Excitement. Certainly the faded echo of adrenaline.<p>

_(Once, her body was warm.)_

And there she is, at his door. And then there she is, at his bed—he can feel her, feel her presence teasing at his senses, like gossamer grey window drapes caught on the edge of a breeze. He's still sitting, tangled in his dark sheets, and now she stands next to him _(so close so close but not nearly close enough)_ with that strange combination of uncertainty and boldness that never fails to make him smile. So he does. And she smiles back, coy, fingering the collar of her sweater that hangs oh-so-low like it inexplicably does sometimes. Only maybe a little more than usual. Yes, like that. And oh, she doesn't have on her leggings, or her boots, or her white undershirt, just her sweater hanging off one shoulder. Just to torture _(teasetempt)_ him.

He can't stop staring at her skin. There's so much of her skin he's never seen, and he's anything but unaware of it. How could he be? Her feet, and her legs, and there, right there is her shoulder, next to her collarbone, next to her neck, next to her jaw, next to her lips and-

He _wants_. Oh, how he wants, so badly it makes his teeth ache. Her lips—he can't stop staring—her lips part slightly and all he can see is that little space where her tongue moves against her teeth. She is looking at him, her expression a mix of wonderment and happiness and trust and light and everything that makes Annie, Annie.

And underneath all that is just a bit, just a whisper, justahint of the desire that he feels, and this, this is what he wants too.

_(All of it, everything, the whole world and just them.)_

Her right hand rises, reaches out, and grazes his temple. He shivers under her fingers. They glide, light as a thought half-finished, over his cheek, next to his jaw, along his neck, across his chest and then down down _down_ to where his breath catches in his throat and his mouth falls open and his eyes glaze over and all he can feel is her touch on him.

_(Does she feel that? Can she feel that?)_

He's still staring at her face, can't look away from it, couldn't look away if he tried, if he even wanted to. She leans closer and opens her mouth, to speak, to say something _(his name oh please oh please let it be his name)_, and he hears

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><p>a knock.<p>

A knock on his door.

He heard a knock on his door.

It could be only one person.

She was knocking on his door, and usually he would freeze stop hold stillstillstill, only this time he didn't, he was _so close_ he was _this close_ to finishing and if he could just, if she would just…

"Mitchell?" His name drifted hesitantly from beyond his door, falling at last from her lips like the blood red juice of a pomegranate.

It was enough—the whole world _tugged_.

For some time afterward, all he could hear was his own ragged breathing; the sweet, pulsing sense of _almost-alive_ lingered in his veins, pounding through his head and pricking behind his eye. Finally, the frantic knocking on his door penetrated the thick fog, and Annie's voice reached him, heavy with worry.

"Mitchell, are you all right? I swear to god, Mitchell, if you don't answer me, I will poof right into your room, privacy be damned!"

"I'm fine, Annie," he croaked harshly, deathly afraid that she might follow through on her threat. If she saw him like this, after he had just…

"Oh." The relief in her voice was palpable. "Oh, thank goodness. I was so worried, Mitchell, you kept moaning and making these awful sounds."

"Yeah," he choked out.

"Well, so long as you're okay. Do you want me to come in? Do you want to talk about it? I could make you some tea."

He could practically hear the hopeful smile on her face, and his insides clenched around a hard ball of self-loathing. There she was, just wanting to make sure he was okay, and here he was, wanking to the thought of smooth, ghostly skin under-

"Mitchell?"

"No," he managed through his aching teeth. "No, I'm fine. I'll see you in the morning."

"Oh, okay. If you're sure."

He could still feel her hovering hesitantly at his door. "Yeah, Annie, I'm sure."

Her presence shifted away then, and in the condemning silence she left in her wake he could at least breathe a little easier. Blindly, he reached for the towel he knew was strewn somewhere across his floor.

He had never felt so dirty.

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><p><em>(Here's a secret: he lasted a week before he did it again.)<em>


End file.
